Happy Chinese New Year!

I hope everyone has a good start to the new year. A fun fact some people may not know: “Chinese New Year” is a misnomer. It’s actually the Lunar New Year (the new year based on the Lunar calendar) and is celebrated throughout many different countries. It’s an agricultural calendar and marks the time when things start to warm up.

How does this affect the HackRF Blue? Well, China basically shuts down for 3 weeks (till March), but if you’ve read our previous updates, this won’t be news to you. The expected shipping period is still March (late March) and hasn’t changed.

Chinese customs is still holding half our parts for ransom, which we talked about in a previous update and is not unexpected, and we’ll most likely get everything after the new year period is over. Their tactic is simply a money grab, if you’re happy to give cash under the table then customs clearance can be ‘expedited’ to what it normally takes during other times of the year – we decided to wait it out instead because aside from all the laws we’d be breaking (which comes part of the package when you’re doing anything in China), it would leave us with too little margin of error financially.

Speaking of financials, in case you missed it, Paypal released our funds after we took the nuclear option (which was all they left us with). If you’re thinking of using Paypal with an Indiegogo campaign, well, don’t.

So really this isn’t much of an update other than to say: we’re still here, things are going pretty much as expected, and welcome to the year of the sheep!